Mr. Frank Allaun asked:

the Minister without Portfolio if he will introduce legislation to permit the Press Council to take space in advertising columns of newspapers to publish its reports where newspapers have failed to publish them, and to provide it with up to £100,000 a year for this purpose.

No, Sir.

Does the Minister agree that the main value of the Press Council reports is, by exposure, to put newspaper readers on guard against misrepresentations or misleading treatment of news, and also to make newspaper proprietors more scrupulous? If the newspaper proprietors suppress such reports of their own misdoings, what alternative proposals, or better proposals, has the Minister in mind?

It is not for the Minister but for the Press Council, which has not made any request to us on these lines, and I do not think the Press Council would wish us to interfere with what at the moment is a perfectly free operation.